Denver Post sports writer Adrian Dater posts his Avs Mailbag on Mondays during the 2009-10 NHL season.
for the Avs Mailbag.
With the outstanding play of Craig Anderson, has he earned himself an Olympic invite even though he did not go to the Team USA training camp?
— Jeff, Oklahoma
Jeff – That’s a great question right now, and you have to believe the brass at Team USA are starting to think about Andy. I mean, he’s been the best goalie in the whole league so far, not just the best American goalie. So, yes, I think we’re going to see a lot more of USA scouts on hand at Avs games for a while, and I’m sure Andy would love to get the call for his country.
Buffalo’s Ryan Miller has been considered the front-runner to be the starting American goalie, but Anderson
could change that. Miller, Tim Thomas and Jonathan Quick were the three goalies invited to USA Olympic camp.
Do you think players who make blatant injurious hits should be suspended as long as the injured player is out with that injury?
— Stephanie, Superior
Stephanie – It’s certainly an interesting question and tempting to say yes to, but I have to say no in the end. What if a guy is just a slow healer — do you penalize the guy who injured him because of that? What if something else caused him to stay hurt longer? What if some guys start faking injuries to draw suspensions of top opponents?
There are too many ways where such a system could be abused. On the other hand, it steams you as a fan of a team when one of your guys gets knocked out of the lineup for a month because of some cheap shot, and maybe all the guy who did it gets a handful of games. That happens all the time, and sometimes the punishment just doesn’t fit the crime. Supplemental discipline is always going to be an area full of second-guessing and controversy.
Hey, Adrian. As of Friday, three of the top 10 attacks in the league (Calgary, Atlanta, Colorado) are in the bottom 10 in S/G. Any insight on that surprising stat?
— Pascalp, Barcelona
Pascalp – Good to hear from Barcelona. Yeah, well, that happens sometimes, doesn’t it? I think that’s more of a statistical fluke right now more than anything, but the answer of course is goaltending. Those numbers have changed a bit since, but the Avs showed that you can win a game sometimes when getting embarrassingly outshot. The Flames had the 32-14 shot advantage, and the Avs took the 3-2 win. That was because of Craig Anderson, of course.
The shots in were 46-25 in favor of the Sharks, but it finished a 3-1 game.
The Flames and Thrashers also have had good power plays so far, too, and that explains some of that. You usually get more quality shots on the PP.
So here we are at the best start for the Avs in the history of the franchise. How much of it do you chalk up to the coaching? And I’m asking about the whole lot here: Joe Sacco, Steve Konowalchuk, Sylvain Lefebvre and Adam Deadmarsh. And do you think Jocelyn Thibault’s goalie coaching has contributed to Anderson being the game-stealer he’s proving to be?
— Jeff, Longmont
Jeff – Of course, a lot of it has been because of coaching. I really think the Avs made not only a good hire in Sacco, but also two tremendous new assistants in Lefebvre and Konowalchuk. And everyone loves the fact that Deadmarsh is back around the team.
I like the fact that everyone is new and fresh and eager to succeed. Sometimes you see the same old retread faces around the league as coaches, either the serial assistant or the former head coach who latches on somewhere else and everybody knows he’d rather not have had to take the job and wants to be a head man again.
We’ll have a bigger feature on Sacco running in Wednesday’s Post, but the thing I like about him is he doesn’t seem to get too over-excited over any win. I’ve yet to hear him call any early season win “huge.” That’s a big pet peeve of mine — a player or coach calling any win in the early going “huge.” It’s not a “huge” win. It’s an early-season win, that’s it, and teams with guys who say an early-season win is “huge” always end up losers in the end. And he doesn’t sugarcoat things as much as some previous Avs coaches. If somebody isn’t playing well, he says it.
One thing that I would constructively criticize his predecessor, Tony Granato, for was his overly apologetic answers to the media about players who weren’t getting it done. I mean, yeah, it’s a good thing that Tony G. was always trying to keep things positive and all that, but I’m a big believer that coaches should tell it like it is about their players. I think it keeps them more accountable. Maybe it doesn’t make them too likable at times to the players, but players should never expect their coach to be a pal. Scotty Bowman was never considered a pal by any one of his hundreds of players over the years, but look at his record.
It seems like Matt Duchene is having a hard time putting the puck in the net. Given his skill level, is that just a product of the jump to the NHL, or is he “squeezing his stick too tight”? What can he do to straighten it out? Should he have been sent back to his junior team?
— Chris, Missoula, Mont.
Chris – I don’t get the whole argument that sending a guy back to a junior team is better for a kid’s development than being in the NHL. Not for a guy with Duchene’s talent anyway. I think Dutchy is right where he should be, with the Colorado Avalanche. It’s a younger man’s league now, so he’s actually playing against a lot of guys his own age now, for one thing.
I might agree that it would be bad for him to be here if he were playing eight minutes a night on the fourth line or something, but he’s getting 15-20 a night centering the second line. That’s the big reason why it’s better for him to be here. He’s learning so much right now, things that would have just been put off another year otherwise. It’s going to be so much more valuable to him, say, next year than if he’d spend another year at Brampton mastering what he’d already mastered.
Teams aren’t as scared anymore about playing their young kids some major minutes. Unless you were a Bobby Orr or a Wayne Gretzky, that never happened in the old NHL. You had to spend your two or three years in junior, then you got dumped on the third or fourth line your first couple years in the NHL and were nursed along. Not anymore as much, and I like the difference. It’s just a faster game now, full of eager kids.
I notice that whenever they interview a player in the locker room, the players frequently have an Aquafina bottle with an orange or pink liquid on their lockers. I imagine it’s some kind of recovery or protein mix. Do you know specifically what it is?
— Joey Suyeishi, Lone Tree
Joey – Well, I’m not supposed to give an advertising plug for the maker of the drink, but you’re exactly right about it being a protein “recovery” drink.
Personally, I think some of those drink mixes are a little on the flim-flam side, but teams like to give them to the players after a game. But a lot of the literature I’ve read about protein-drink mixes are that they are simply wasted and are overkill to a person’s bodily needs. But there has been such an explosion in performance and diet “technology,” and those drinks have become a staple of postgame scenarios for a few years now.
Adrian Dater has covered the Colorado Avalanche since the team moved to Denver in 1995. for the Avs Mailbag.
